


To Love Again

by squirenonny



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: 31 Days of Sadfic, CFSWF, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 02:05:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4245402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirenonny/pseuds/squirenonny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day Navani married Dalinar was the best--and worst--day of her life.</p>
<p>Written for CFSWF 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Love Again

Navani’s heart broke as Dalinar turned her way.

_Surely_ , she told herself. _Surely this will stop hurting someday._

Perhaps someday, but not yet. Two months since the wedding, and still the pain hit her anew with each unseeing glance, each casual dismissal, each fresh introduction.

“Excuse me,” Dalinar said, approaching with swift, purposeful strides. His gaze, as always, struggled to focus on her. He squinted, then turned his eyes away, looking out the nearby window, which overlooked the gardens of Urithiru. “I’m sorry, I seem to have forgotten your name.”

“Navani,” she replied. _Your wife._ She’d stopped saying it aloud, except when her patience was extraordinarily short. Forcing Dalinar to confront that fact did no good, other than giving him a headache that incapacitated him for an hour or two. Long before it passed, he would have forgotten the cause.

Dalinar nodded. For a moment, his stern expression wavered. A flash of understanding in his blue eyes, tighter around the corners than ever before. A slight frown.

Just a moment, and then it was gone.

“Have you seen Adolin?”

She noticed Dalinar didn’t use her name. From what Adolin and Renarin had managed to wheedle out of him, he likely hadn’t even heard it. Or he had forgotten it in the same moment, which amounted to the same thing. Navani knew frustratingly little about his curse, in part because Dalinar so seldom spoke of it, even to his sons, even after the disaster that had been their wedding had made it abundantly clear to all involved that Dalinar’s wife— _wives_ —had been excised from his mind.

The other reason she had ten thousand questions and no substantial answers was that she had to trust the questioning to others. She was as good as a stranger to him. The first and only time she had tried, Dalinar had taken her for a political rival digging for gossip and had sent her away with a tight-lipped frown.

“I haven’t seen him, no,” Navani said, perhaps a bit more sharply than the question warranted. She glanced at the ring of blue uniformed guards keeping a respectful distance. “Bridge Four is more likely than I to know, surely.”

Dalinar’s face darkened at her tone, but Navani watched only for a flash of remembrance. Those were rare and fleeting, but they were something. She’d tried everything to make him remember her. Shouting, flirting, calm explanation. What didn’t anger him perplexed him, and left Navani feeling gutted.

Anger and confusion presented in equal measure now, and sparked a whisper of guilt in Navani. Dalinar didn’t deserve to be provoked, whatever the storming man had done in the past.

With a deep breath, Navani took reign of her emotions. “Have you tried the sparring grounds? Adolin mentioned how he’s been neglecting his training since…” _Since helping me interrogate you about this curse_. Navani left the thought hanging. She had promised herself she would not make this harder on either of them. If Dalinar noticed the omission, he didn’t comment.

“As a matter of fact, that’s exactly where I was heading.” Dalinar had a distant look in his eyes, as though not wholly certain why he had stopped to ask Navani about Adolin. That was the worst. Worse than being ignored, worse than being treated as a scribe or a spy or a guest.

Dalinar knew he had married someone, though he didn’t know who. He knew his second wife was alive and in Urithiru. Likely he realized he ran into her on occasion, though she doubted he remembered their meetings after they parted. That was the crux of it. Dalinar had lost his own memories of Navani. The moment he finished his vows and became in truth her husband, he had stumbled, blinked, and looked up to find himself hand-in-hand with a stranger whose image he couldn’t fix in his mind.

But Dalinar remembered what others told him about Navani. Not her name, never her name, but other details. She’d had to ask Adolin to stop recounting her visits to Dalinar; it had only pained him more.

He ignored the paradox when he could, but there were times—like now—when his mask slipped and she found a lost, uncertain man within.

Suddenly, Dalinar cleared his throat. The Radiant’s mask settled back into place, and he nodded cordially to her. His gaze once more slid right past her.

“I should go…” He strained for her name, then shook his head.

“It’s all right,” she said. Inside she was screaming, sobbing, poring over every text she’d read that made even a passing reference to the Old Magic. Inside, she was planning a journey north, to the Nightwatcher’s valley. Likely it would only end in a curse worse than this, but the thought still tempted.

Dalinar turned, but hesitated as he started to go. “You know my wife?”

It wasn’t much of a question. Everyone in Urithiru knew Navani, and her relationship with Dalinar. That she had been his brother’s wife first was scandal enough, and Dalinar’s curse had etched them permanently into the collective consciousness.

“I do,” she said around a lump in her throat.

Dalinar half-turned, his eyes fixed on the ground between them. “Did I love her?”

Navani squeezed her eyes shut. “Almost as much as she loves you.”

“Tell her.” A hitched breath, almost a sigh. “Tell her I mean to love her again. Somehow.”

Navani didn’t answer, and Dalinar didn’t wait for her to find her voice. He left, bodyguards closing in around him. One shot her a sympathetic look. She ignored them all, holding her head high and her back stiff until their footsteps had faded away. Only then did she press her back against the wall and let the tears flow.


End file.
